Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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[Troy Adams] ” I only shoot weddings, people generally don’t move very fast like in sports video.”
Yes, that’s a good thing and it is what is saving you. You’re probably able to get away with higher shutter speeds than I would be in my day-to-day shooting.
Ceremonies, for sure, are going to be slow and lethargic… so higher-than-normal shutter speeds might not make a bit of difference most of the time. However, receptions (especially dances) very well might have some fast motion that will look strobby and turn the party into the action-movie-look if shutters get too high.
Another thing to consider is lighting… I’ve never shot a wedding (and never want to… I hate even going to them), but my friends who do are constantly complaining at the low light levels. Keep in mind that shooting at a shutter speed of 1/100th (irrespective of the frame rate) is going to require twice as much light for the same exposure compared to shooting at 1/50th. If your lens aperture is wide open, then the way to compensate for that light loss in camera is to jack up the ISO… which usually isn’t a good idea and will make footage more grainy and noisy. Just food for thought.
Happy shooting!
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Give that a try and see how it works… hopefully it will help.
You said you shoot at 50fps so you can slow down some of it…
One mistake you see all the time is people shooting at a higher frame rate than they need. They seem to think “Well, I know most of this project will be at 24p, but some of it might need to be slow-mo’d so I’ll shoot everything at 60fps for good slow-mo, and I can always show it at normal speed if needed.”
On the surface that makes sense, but it’s not a good way to get good images. Re-interpreting fast-frame-rate footage to the slower frame rate of your project (in order to get “normal” speed motion) can look ok, but it will never look as good as if you had shot the footage at the “normal” speed. For one thing, you’ll need to do a speed change that is still exactly frame-for-frame accurate, in order for the pictures to not get mushy. I.e., if you shoot 60fps but are working in a 24p project, the footage will really only look perfect if the slow-mo is 40% (40% of 60 = 24, and you get a perfect frame-for-frame edit). For the second thing, overcranked footage that is presented at “normal” speed will be the same as footage shot with a much-too-high shutter speed, and might look staccato… because it was shot at a higher shutter speed.
In a perfect world you’d shoot all your “normal” speed footage at a normal frame rate (24, 25, 30… whatever your project and area of the world is)… and you’d overcrank only the footage you intend to slow-mo by the exact amount you want to slow it. I know that’s not always practical, but that’s why I said that was a “perfect world” scenario.
I know those are things you weren’t asking about… but when you mentioned shooting at a higher framerate I felt need to mention them.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Are you absolutely sure you were in a full manual mode and that your shutter speed was locked? That sounds to me like the flash was tricking the camera into momentarily cranking up the shutter speed.
By the way, just chiming in with an unsolicited opinion here, but your shutter speed is quite fast. If you are actually shooting at 50fps (was this for slow mo?), then a “normal” shutter speed would be 1/100th of a second. Anything higher than that and you are going to start getting that strobby choppy staccato look that is indicative of narrow-shutter shooting (i.e., the movies “Gladiator” or “Saving Private Ryan”).
A “normal” shutter (one that is equivalent to a 180° shutter in a real film camera) is “one over twice the frame rate.” For example, if you are shooting 24p then a normal shutter speed would be 1/48th. If you are shooting 30fps, then it is 1/60th, etc. That little equation gives the proper amount of motion blur to footage for your brain to interpret the action as smooth motion. Higher shutter speeds obviously give less blur (a 1/120th speed would pretty much freeze the action perfectly still unless you had really fast motion going on), and give you that choppy look.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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That would most definitely work, and would be great if could be found for free or cheap.
I still think it’s overkill though. If one is only hanging PAR cans or similarly-sized fixtures, I’m not sure why anything more is needed than one pipe hanging on each of the ring’s four sides… though real trusswork would look cool, if seeing it counts at all, or is an element of the visual production design.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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No disrespect to Dennis, who does work that most of us would only dream of doing… but he’s coming from a world where he gets to do the highest-of-the-highest-end work with all the toys and resources available to do that… and unfortunately in that world there’s a lot of “We don’t have the budget so that can’t be done” action going on. Most of the rest of us live in the “We don’t have the budget, so we have to find a different way to do it” mindset… which can mean a lot of improvising, DIY, and putting things together with spit and toothpicks. I’m sure the high-enders would laugh at the lighting grid over our own stage here, which is totally DIY just out of big electrical conduit. It’s much lighter weight than a real pipe grid, much cheaper, I was able to build it myself in a long weekend with nothing more than I could buy at the Home Depot one mile away, and it does everything I personally need it to do an more (and does it safely).
Of course you can build a truss for less than $5000. You can probably build one for $500 if you know what you are doing, get creative, and don’t care that it doesn’t look exactly like something straight from WWE… and it would still be serviceable, do what you need it to do, and be perfectly safe. If you use something as lightweight as LED or tungsten PAR cans, remember that those don’t weigh much… a truss (or whatever rig you come up with) only has to hold those up safely… it doesn’t have to be built to suspend a dozen V8 engine blocks.
So, can you call a theatrical, stage, or film lighting contractor and say “Hey, I need a full-blown truss system around a wrestling ring for $5k”? No, you can’t. Well, yeah you can call them and say that, but the answer will be “No, we can’t help you.” But with some ingenuity and a DIY attitude it certainly can be done. For a fraction of that.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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A question or two, Chris…
Are you attempting to light this ring for photographic purposes?… i.e., video or film production of the matches? Or are you just lighting it for a live audience? I was curious enough to look at your profile and website, and get the sense that your events are for spectators, not for a TV audience.
If it is just for a live audience, then sync/flicker issues that Mark has experienced with LED fixtures is really a non-issue (unless they are so bad that the flicker is visible to the naked eye). If it is just for an audience, you can use the instruments that you have in mind).
If, though, you are lighting from a production standpoint, then yes that is indeed something you’d need to worry about and LEDs (or at least those LEDs) might be problematic, unless you can shoot clearscan with all your cameras (in theory, as long as all the instruments were on the same house power source any flicker should be in sync… but again, I said in theory).
If you want to do this on the cheap, frankly plain old-fashioned PAR cans (like you’d get from Amercian DJ or the scads of them on eBay) would very likely more than do the job, and be extremely inexpensive. You’d have some heat from the tungstens, but if you have a room big enough for a wrestling ring, even a whole boatload of PARs wouldn’t likely give you any appreciable heat issues. And there would be zero synch issues, obviously.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Pretty specific questions. Mark… and not tons of traffic in here these days.
I’m betting you’d get much better/faster advice in one of the RED and/or AJA forums.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Sadly sometimes the hosts have no solutions.
Also the “moderators” in this forum is really just “moderator”… singular.
There have not been any posts from either Don or Mike in here (or on any COW forum actually) in many years. Not sure what their status is.
This is not a problem I have ever heard about. Unfortunately this forum has almost zero traffic these days so not many other people are seeing your post either.
Hope you get it figured out though.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Greg, I’m sending you a contact name to your personal email… check it.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Another possibility/option would be to budget for an illustrator… illustrations might be helpful since, as Richard said, real archival/period photography will be nonexistent.
This is one of those projects that I always feel is done backwards… I’m always harping on writing (or concepting) something around the images that you know you can get (or already have), rather than the other way around. You’re obviously stuck though, having to produce to their existing soundtrack.
I know neither Richard nor I even remotely answered the actual question that you posed… but do have a couple of other things to think about.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
